(no subject)
I have started a youtube channel where I can post videos about aesthetics. I am making my first episode about Kant in multiple parts. At first I wanted to make the videos short, but I can't shut up, so they are getting longer and longer. My most recent video is 20 minutes. The length I think is good, though. Just because something is on youtube, it doesn't have to be oriented to a short attention span.
I made a video about addiction and loneliness. I have realized that I feel lonely, and it's been a cause of depression for me. I feel like I am driving myself deeper into the sadness by being alone. It just didn't occur to me that I needed other people. I quit drinking alcohol earlier this year, and it's been a positive thing in many ways. I no longer have trouble sleeping, where I rarely slept well before. And I am saving a lot of money. But there is some sort of trade-off that has finally become apparent. I wasn't an alcoholic, certainly not in the way we seem to imagine it... when you go to the store and you buy a six pack and there is another guy buying a case of cheap beer and two bottles of whiskey, you say "that's not me - that's an alcoholic." I realized that there are people who have it way more together than I do, in terms of a career, in terms of a social life, etc, who have thought that same thing and ended up what they said they weren't. And maybe they really are an addict for years before something happens where it's just made clear. I read about a bishop that had already gotten a DUI, and was drunk driving and ran over and killed a bicyclist. Addiction just isn't the caricature we make of it; it's something you become, and it doesn't matter if you are successful or wealthy or "good."
And as much as I was able to justify the "that's not me" narrative by only drinking beer and never drinking more than a few beers a night, and never drinking and driving, I still ended up having a few to end the night, even if I started the day thinking "tonight I won't have anything." I'd end up having a couple beers, and I'd fall asleep, then wake up two hours later and toss and turn with sleepless anxiety the rest of the night.
Nonetheless, I think drinking allowed me to avoid the loneliness and the sadness. You don't really need all that much to avoid the problem, and it doesn't have to be hard liquor. Maybe I was addicted, because I was using it to suppress the sadness. And now that I don't do that anymore, and now that it's summer and I'm a bit isolated and working less, the loneliness has caught up with me. I felt like I was going to have a breakdown. I never knew that I felt so alone.
I googled loneliness and depression, and just reading about it helped. I am climbing out of the hole that I've been in for a few days, and I am learning how much people need other people. It makes sense to me. It's still such a new and weird thing to be living with though, this realization that people need people. I wonder how long I've been avoiding it.
Social media has gotten to be horrifying. I'm not sure if this is a new thing, but I find that people share stories about things like animal abuse and terrible crimes people commit in this really insistent way. And they do so with this moralizing tone that is so weird, because obviously one shouldn't morally approve of these things. I just don't want to see this stuff, but from the looks of it, it's become a kind of genre of entertainment. Of course it's not just social media. There are television shows like those CSI shows that they play marathons of every day. I can't imagine enjoying a single episode of such a show, because I actually empathize with the pain. And I would be able to just chalk it up to me being a bit too sensitive, but the fact that people can watch hours of it everyday makes me think the sensitivity issue isn't mine. It's as if people have turned suffering into something to get a kick out of.
And an important point for me is that the field of entertainment/information I am so disturbed by isn't horror movies or heavy metal music or pornography, where I think that there is usually some sort of separation between the content and life... a tacit understanding that it's on the level of fantasy maybe? And it's not to say that I am never disturbed that people enjoy some horror movies, but at least they enjoy it with the understanding that it is what it is. It's very different from when someone shares graphic photos of an actual dead animal with a comment like "i hope they kill whatever sicko did this1!!" over and over... when someone does that, they aren't doing it in the spirit of being "humane." Rather, it's the spirit in which Romans enjoyed the coliseum, or in which people enjoy mob violence and spectacle in any other form.
It is another source of feeling lonely and estranged, though. In a very general way, social media makes me feel alienated and disappointed, but it can so easily appear as if the "social" term were true. I've let apps and things outstrip social reality. It's a kind of addiction too; it's habitual, and hard to stop. And the habit is impacting me negatively, because it has made my world so poor.
To solve this problem, I probably must go out and see friends more.
I made a video about addiction and loneliness. I have realized that I feel lonely, and it's been a cause of depression for me. I feel like I am driving myself deeper into the sadness by being alone. It just didn't occur to me that I needed other people. I quit drinking alcohol earlier this year, and it's been a positive thing in many ways. I no longer have trouble sleeping, where I rarely slept well before. And I am saving a lot of money. But there is some sort of trade-off that has finally become apparent. I wasn't an alcoholic, certainly not in the way we seem to imagine it... when you go to the store and you buy a six pack and there is another guy buying a case of cheap beer and two bottles of whiskey, you say "that's not me - that's an alcoholic." I realized that there are people who have it way more together than I do, in terms of a career, in terms of a social life, etc, who have thought that same thing and ended up what they said they weren't. And maybe they really are an addict for years before something happens where it's just made clear. I read about a bishop that had already gotten a DUI, and was drunk driving and ran over and killed a bicyclist. Addiction just isn't the caricature we make of it; it's something you become, and it doesn't matter if you are successful or wealthy or "good."
And as much as I was able to justify the "that's not me" narrative by only drinking beer and never drinking more than a few beers a night, and never drinking and driving, I still ended up having a few to end the night, even if I started the day thinking "tonight I won't have anything." I'd end up having a couple beers, and I'd fall asleep, then wake up two hours later and toss and turn with sleepless anxiety the rest of the night.
Nonetheless, I think drinking allowed me to avoid the loneliness and the sadness. You don't really need all that much to avoid the problem, and it doesn't have to be hard liquor. Maybe I was addicted, because I was using it to suppress the sadness. And now that I don't do that anymore, and now that it's summer and I'm a bit isolated and working less, the loneliness has caught up with me. I felt like I was going to have a breakdown. I never knew that I felt so alone.
I googled loneliness and depression, and just reading about it helped. I am climbing out of the hole that I've been in for a few days, and I am learning how much people need other people. It makes sense to me. It's still such a new and weird thing to be living with though, this realization that people need people. I wonder how long I've been avoiding it.
Social media has gotten to be horrifying. I'm not sure if this is a new thing, but I find that people share stories about things like animal abuse and terrible crimes people commit in this really insistent way. And they do so with this moralizing tone that is so weird, because obviously one shouldn't morally approve of these things. I just don't want to see this stuff, but from the looks of it, it's become a kind of genre of entertainment. Of course it's not just social media. There are television shows like those CSI shows that they play marathons of every day. I can't imagine enjoying a single episode of such a show, because I actually empathize with the pain. And I would be able to just chalk it up to me being a bit too sensitive, but the fact that people can watch hours of it everyday makes me think the sensitivity issue isn't mine. It's as if people have turned suffering into something to get a kick out of.
And an important point for me is that the field of entertainment/information I am so disturbed by isn't horror movies or heavy metal music or pornography, where I think that there is usually some sort of separation between the content and life... a tacit understanding that it's on the level of fantasy maybe? And it's not to say that I am never disturbed that people enjoy some horror movies, but at least they enjoy it with the understanding that it is what it is. It's very different from when someone shares graphic photos of an actual dead animal with a comment like "i hope they kill whatever sicko did this1!!" over and over... when someone does that, they aren't doing it in the spirit of being "humane." Rather, it's the spirit in which Romans enjoyed the coliseum, or in which people enjoy mob violence and spectacle in any other form.
It is another source of feeling lonely and estranged, though. In a very general way, social media makes me feel alienated and disappointed, but it can so easily appear as if the "social" term were true. I've let apps and things outstrip social reality. It's a kind of addiction too; it's habitual, and hard to stop. And the habit is impacting me negatively, because it has made my world so poor.
To solve this problem, I probably must go out and see friends more.